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Renewable energies from sources like solar and wind power are received more and more attention due to the concerns of energy shortage and air pollution. However, the random and intermittent nature of these renewable sources makes it quite challenging for their use and dispatch through the grid. One effective solution is to connect the power and the grid with electrical energy storage devices.

Flow battery (FB) as one kind of energy storage techniques is rather suitable for the application due to its features like long life time, active thermal management as well as the flexible design. Dalian Institute of Chemical and Physics (DICP) has devoted to FBs research for more than 10 years from materials to system integration, including vanadium flow battery (VFB) at stage of commercialization and other new battery systems. At DICP, VFB stacks and VFB unit module with different scales were successfully developed (Figure 1). To further accelerate its commercialization, a spin-off company (Rongke power Co.Ltd) was established in 2008, where different demonstrations of VFB were carried out. In 2012, a world largest 5MW/10MWh VFB system was successfully integrated and combined with a 50 MW wind farm (Figure 2). 

To further improve the power density of flow batteries, some other new flow battery systems were investigated as well. For example, Li/Br flow battery and Zn/Ni single flow battery were recently proposed in our group. In this presentation, the work on flow batteries at DICP will be introduced and the progress of flow batteries at DICP will be presented.